One of the radio stations in the Seattle area is KMTT, or, "The Mountain" as they like to be known. It's a good station and they play great music. One of their radio personalities, John Fisher, was was apparently a lover of the emerging technologies of the time, and I believe was instrumental in their release of this new chatting phenomenon.
Remember, this was internet infancy. There was nothing close to online chat with the exception of AOL if memory serves me--I think it was around 1991. If I can't remember the facts, I'll just make something up.
What made this new chat software a hit? First of all it was free. Secondly, it was Windows-based. That meant it was easy, colorful, intuitive, and it ran on most computers at the time (sorry Mac users). It was a standalone program, installed from a single 3.5" floppy disk. I don't remember where or how it was given away, but one of the locations that had them was The Incredible Universe, a now-defunct tech-oriented superstore that was located at the Auburn Supermall right near my home. The software worked really well, but only allowed a limited number of users, or "connections" to log in at any given time. My memory is telling me the number was 20, but it could have been 12--I can't remember. If you wanted to log on and it was full you just kept trying until someone bowed out and left you a space.
I think we users considered ourselves to be somewhat elite. Here we were, using cutting edge software to yuk it up with radio DJ's and others like we were old friends. There were numerous mentions of The Mountain Online during the course of the radio shows. Sometimes they would be promoting other listeners to jump on board, and telling them how to pick up their free disks, and other times the DJ would cite an interesting experience or conversation they had online with listeners.
The interesting thing to note was the statistics of the time. The radio station was big. It still is big. The software was free. The software limited the number of users that could be online at any one time. Given all those factors, it was still not overcrowded. What does that mean? It means that not too many people had computers then--And even if they did, not many had modems in them or knew how to set them up. And again--The internet was barely moving, with nothing like chat yet. Hard to fathom--And it wasn't all that long ago.
The Mountain staff hosted a party downtown Seattle at some point during all this. I can't imagine them actually mentioning it on the air for fear of too many people crashing it, but I know it was all over the chatroom. It was everybody's chance to put a face with the user names that they had been yakking with all this time. It was a riot! We had the best time--If memory serves me, practically every person from the radio station was there except the DJ that was on the air at that particular time. Station manager, music director--You name it. John Fisher and his wife were near the door as I recall, asking people as they came in what their online name is. After exclamations of surprise and so forth, I believe everyone got one of those "Hello My Name Is" labels to wear (my name online was Rick the Driver). It was one of the most fun parties I have ever been to in a public place. The DJ's talked it up pretty well on the air afterward.
Here's an interesting tidbit: Two of the users on The Mountain Online actually got married not long after that! I wonder if they were the first match ever made via online chat? He went by St. Alphonzo, and she went by something Luna. He was a computer business owner and she was a pharmacist at Bartell Drug. St. Al as we called him still runs a website devoted to Steely Dan fans, called Under The Banyan Trees.
Ah, those were good nerd times.
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